


An Ungilded Cage

by Kartaylir



Series: Black Codex: Files Not Found [5]
Category: Star Wars Legends: The Old Republic (Video Game)
Genre: Canon Typical Holographic Appearance Alteration, Canon Typical Mind-Control, F/F, Vaginal Fisting
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-11-11
Updated: 2019-11-11
Packaged: 2021-01-27 07:37:18
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings, Rape/Non-Con
Chapters: 3
Words: 3,487
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/21388480
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Kartaylir/pseuds/Kartaylir
Summary: After Taris, Hunter toys with Cipher Nine again; reveals a different side to her. A different face.Mind control is such a useful way to ensure an enemy doesn't share your other identities, your secrets.
Relationships: Hunter (Star Wars: The Old Republic)/Female Imperial Agent | Cipher Nine
Series: Black Codex: Files Not Found [5]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1521593
Kudos: 10





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> If you're not familiar with Hunter as a character and don't mind spoilers there's further information in the end notes.

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> A trap is set and promises are made. Secrets linger.

I was to meet Hunter at one of the galaxy’s most inexhaustible resources, the questionable hotel. The kind where they didn’t ask questions and the room fees covered blood stains on the sheets. Just the sort of place I’d go for arranging certain types of clean-up. To, or to stay thoroughly out of sight. All it’d have needed would be a cantina where all the glasses were dirty and the occupants more so, and you’d be approaching the true Nar Shaddaa experience as well. 

Not quite the sort of place Ardun Kothe would have picked, I thought. Despite all he’d done to me, things were simpler easier when the Republic spymaster was about. The man radiated a certain discomfort, an idealism twisted up by what he continued to do to me. Perhaps he’d realized that by this, he had ruined any chance of my willful, honest defection. Even after everything, I could only stomach so much of the Republic’s hypocrisy.

And then there was Hunter. When he was about I could often feel the weight of his eyes upon me, hands brushing against waist or shoulder in a pretense of accident. The way his frame blocked doorways whenever I might move away. 

Always just out of sight of the others, as if the rest of SIS still held to some pretense of ideals.

I’d seen it so many times before. So many places bore the choice of placating the powerful weighed against the prospect of being beaten, ruined, and abused. I considered myself lucky that sometimes I needed only weigh my cover against such suffering.

At least that was a choice. One where I could reassure, restrain myself with the knowledge that I could always steal a weapon, snap someone’s neck or crush their throat. Escape, if only for a time.

Here even that was gone.

I waited on the bed of the small room, and did not look too closely at the blankets. It was near impossible to pick out the original color from amid the stains. The datapad in my hands held an array of records I needed to review, and yet I could hardly force myself to focus on them.

The door at least was silent at Hunter’s arrival, only the change of light and the shift in the patterns of air giving away his presence. He looked much the same as when we’d first met, in the same sort of casual clothes that could blend into the underlife of a thousand planets.

“You’ve been avoiding me,” he said.

“I’ve been b—” I cut my words off as his hand knotted itself into my hair. He tugged at that hold hold me back, and started to unwind one of the small braids that held the rest of my hair in place. At least with the latter there was some gentleness, though I could hear his breath too close behind me.

“You’ll hardly convince us of your sincerity like that,” Hunter said. His fingertips had crept down to the back of my neck. “Tell me about yourself. We’re working together now, and I’d hate to have to invoke your controls just for the sake of conversation.”

I clasped the datapad tighter in my hands. Perhaps there was some slim path I could find there, somewhere to tread that would tell me something of use. The situation had turned desperate enough that perhaps it seemed best to try.

“What do you want to know?” I asked, and I could almost feel Hunter smile. 

“What did you do before Imperial Intelligence?” His hand ran down my back as he spoke, explored the space between fabric and flesh.

I forced myself to note every touch, to engrave the feel of it all in memory. If, when I freed myself, I wanted to remember everything of who I was to hurt.

Hunter’s grip twisted the back of my neck, tight enough to warn me not to move. It seemed he was impatient.

“You know that already,” I said. “I worked for one of the Sith, slaughtered whatever rivals she wished disposed of.”

Vague, perhaps. But more than Imperial Intelligence was ever told. I could feel an itch from the scar across my stomach, an ache from those that wrapped through my leg. Both my first mistress and Darth Jadus had left their marks. Perhaps that was the way of Sith, to release me only with scars.

“You miss it?” The edge beneath his voice was cold, as if he delved merely for ways to wound me further.

I hesitated, and did not speak.

Then Hunter whispered in my ear. The code word was just as cruel when quiet. 

“More than I should.” The words betrayed me. I could feel as Hunter pulled away, leaned back against the wall in apparent relaxation. But then he had no cause to fear me, not with the leash he held. 

“Tell me why,” he said, and whispered the code word once again.

What the mind control had done to me prevented me from hiding even my darkest secrets from him, from myself. “There was a time I could have come to love that cage,” I said, and knew he would find too much joy in that declaration.

He ran his fingers through my hair, and his emotions echoed the sharpness of his smile. “No need to worry. We’ll just build you a new one.”


	2. Chapter 2

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Pain follows the revelation of secrets.

Hunter left after that and ordered me to wait for him. A day, a night, hours of watching as the raindrops dripped across the cracked plexiglass of the window. I envied even them their freedom.

Something ached at the back of my mind, a misplaced piece of memory gnawing at the fragments of all I had become.

“These nights suit you,” Hunter said once he returned. He lingered in the shadows then, as if wanting to watch me from a distance.

I answered only with silence.

“The others are gone, little Legate. You need not play coy with me about what you are.”

“What cause would I have to be coy with you, _Hunter?_”

“You told me what you feared. And you already know I’m not like the others.”

That was true enough. The rest of Ardun Kothe’s unit consisted of a certain sort of twisted idealists, the sort who placed their loyalty to the Republic over their moral concerns. But Hunter enjoyed it. Smiled when the other’s backs were turned, flirted and touched and— 

“You think I’m like you,” I said. That I was Legate and Cipher, that I’d let myself become whatever mask I wore. The puppet with her strings stretched too tight. Perhaps it was pretense for me to think I’d not wholly accepted such designations.

“Not yet.” Hunter leaned in and laid a hand upon my cheek. I could feel as he ran his thumb over my teeth, tugged down one corner of my lips. Maybe he enjoyed the contrast of pale skin against the dark blue of my flesh. And not just that. He smiled. “You know I can’t let you say anything to the others.”

“If you put that contradiction then it will kill me if they guess.” My words were muffled by the touch of his fingers.

“Then don’t let them guess. You’re good at that; it’s one of the things I love about you.” That didn’t sting too much. But then he spoke again. “Codeword: onomatophobia. You’ll not tell them anything to rouse their suspicion. Won’t speak of our discussions even if ordered.”

And so that trap was set. If the others asked me about Hunter, the conflict between orders might tear my mind apart. If I was lucky it might just kill me.

“Understood,” I said, as calm as a droid. “What discussions are those?”

Hunter smiled, and laid a hand over my eyes. “I was hoping you’d ask.”

The shadow on my vision did not keep me from a sudden chill as his other hand shifted to rest atop my shoulder. Someone else keen to use me in all ways. I’d survived it so many times before; I had to believe I could survive it again.

Light returned to my eyes, blurred though it was at first. Hunter’s thumb was damp against my shoulder, and my vision began to clear.

The figure before me had changed, hair turned gold from brownish-red. A narrowed jaw, less of a flush upon the cheeks. But the eyes remained such vibrant green.

“You trained with the Old Man,” I whispered. A thousand details slid into their places. Hints of touch and pressure too small for a conscious mind to recognize. Gaps between what I felt and just what the hologram showed.

“They took me in when I was just a little girl,” Hunter, for it was Hunter still, said. “Taught me to wear hundreds of faces over the years.”

“Why this one?” I asked.

Oh, and that made Hunter smile. “I like being him, most of the time. But you’re special, Legate. Always peering under the masks, or destroying them. Old Man shouldn’t have thought he could replace you.”

“Tell that to his corpse.”

“You do leave a lot of those about, don’t you,” Hunter said, amused. “But I thought you’d like this better. Like her better. Consider it a gift. An extra secret of mine just for you.”

“Neither of us need a hologram to make a mask of ourselves,” I said. 

Hunter slid her hand down, started to undo my shirt from the top. “It’s all masks in our line of work. I’ll make sure you enjoy this one.”  
It frightened me to know that she probably could; that touch and pressure and isolation would eventually make me bend; or break. Perhaps I let myself wish that it wouldn’t hurt too much. I knew how small the chance was that I could slip these chains. Enough to tempt me into enduring whatever came before it.

And so I did not resist when Hunter leaned in to kiss me. Only shivered at the fingers that clasped my breast, that brushed across my nipples until I could feel the rise of them press against cloth.

“I’ll make it a beautiful cage,” Hunter said. Her lips were cool, but the expanse of her mouth, the thinner lines of her jaw, the hand still upon my stomach; all those were warm. I could take some small solace in that.

And it was warmer still when that hand wandered down, when I could feel Hunter’s nails dent half-circles into my thighs. “Tell me what I must know to break you,” she said. It was not a question, and yet not an order. Not yet.

How easily it might become one.

“Remind me of her,” the Cipher said. “Hold me here until I near forget how to breathe.”

Hunter had seen my file, near every record of my life laid out before her. I did not need to say who I should be reminded of.

“Such a fool she was to give you away,” Hunter said. Something glistened behind her eyes, reflected light turned into the memory of something more. “But I’ll never let you go.”

I was as afraid as reassured to know those words were honest. 

“In that case you’d best get started,” I said. It was easier than leaving weight of anticipation ever building above me. So I spread my legs apart until I could feel the seam of my pants stretching at the gesture. It did not matter now how ready my body might be; I could only offer what resistance she allowed. “There’s so much you haven’t seen.”

Hunter stayed quiet then, fingers clenched into my skin. Her smile seemed wider in this guise, though not quite unguarded. It does not fade before she speaks. “Then let’s see how it all comes apart, my Legate. How the cards favor you.”

The care with which she stripped those pants away was too clinical to be gentle. Each scar revealed was felt and tested. Rubbed by the length of a finger, tasted beneath her tongue. And there were so many scars. The rough marks of burns, narrow lines from the cut of blades, the pattern of lighting an eternal memory across my shoulder. 

“Jadus was never as subtle as he thought himself,” Hunter said, as she pulled the pants over my rough-scarred ankle. Perhaps the worst of the injuries Jadus had left me with, but by no means the only one. My clothing was discarded into a rumpled pile to the side.

“A lesson he learned too late,” I said.

Hunter caught her fingers in my undergarments. “He never appreciated what he had.”

“And you do.” I leaned forward, draped my hand across Hunter’s, brushed my lips against hers. Another offering to distract her from my pain. 

But this game Hunter still knew too well. She bit at my lip, then tore the small piece of fabric that formed my underwear from my body. I did not see where the remnants of it landed.

As if that mattered. I shivered. The room was too warm for my tastes, nothing compared to the chill of long-missed Csilla. I wished I shared the warmth of this place, and hoped I could pretend at enough desire to ease whatever pain was to come.

Hunter trapped the thin nub of my now exposed clit beneath one thumbnail, stretched it upward. Then folded her hand as she shoved all of it inside. Quick, sharp enough that I did not bother to hide the way it made me gasp.

“Break for me,” Hunter said, and twisted her hand, flexed fingers inside me to tear at fragile flesh.

The pain was too much to muffle, to bar away with focused thoughts, a clenched hand, a bite to the lip. It felt as if something within me were left raw and open, wet now only with blood. And further scraped away as Hunter folded in her hand, shifted it in concert with the desperate movements of my hips. None of it could aid me; even Hunter’s delight was too wrapped within the pain that filled me.

“Shhh,” Hunter said. “Codeword: onamatophobia. Be still and silent, and survive. It’d be such a waste otherwise.”

There was then only silence. My mind and body trapped alike, entombed in a maze of nerves that led to nowhere.

Pressure built with every movement of her fist, as if she sought to crush every sensation save the fullness of it inside me. Vision turned to darkness and the memory of Csilla’s stars. A hand pressed against my stomach, the weight of an arm as Hunter braced herself to reach in further. 

Something wet trickled down my thigh; it would have been no surprise to find it blood. My flesh torn open in ways I could not see.

And then, frozen, trapped within my thoughts, slowly numbed to the pain, I had naught to block out the sensation of Hunter’s delight. Memories ached like the ways we’d been broken. Half-healed and yet still as evident as the scar beneath Hunter’s eye, every wound etched as a pale line across my skin.

No matter how many strings were pulled, control was always eked out in blood.

Until, until, until that moment. When I was the cost of the surety Hunter craved. Another sacrifice to all the fears built into us.

Hunter smiled, and near wrenched her hand free from me. She could have torn the my body apart there, bent back limbs until they snapped, carved me down through my bones and I would not even have gasped.

Instead, her pace grew gentle, as if that knowledge had satisfied some unspoken hope, stilled some silent fear. The push and pull of Hunter’s hand turned slow, exploratory. Soft enough that I could feel the brush of knuckles inside me, gentler touches amid the ever-present sense of pressure. 

“Fine, you can move again,” Hunter said. “I’ll even let you talk.”

And that came as more relief than I would have wished to admit to. My muscles released their tension. Legs stretched out, near convulsed at their sudden freedom. I shook with the aftermath of all the response that had been denied me. There was no pleasure in it save relief. And how it shamed me that I moaned. How I muffled a keening noise behind my teeth as she withdrew her hand for the final time.

“I like that. Shame I can’t have the team hear you. But they’re still pretending.” Hunter held up her hand, and I looked down, away from the sight of it.

“They’ve a talent for self-delusion,” I said. My voice was soft, raw still from a thousand smothered screams.

Hunter seemed to consider that, quiet for a time as she inspected her own fingers.

“You encouraged it when you saved Chance. They don’t need guilt when they think you’ll forgive them,” Hunter said, her teeth bared in a smile.

“And you think it’s all a game. What use is there for forgiveness then?”

“It’s far less use than finding out all the ways I can make you scream.”

“And here I thought you wanted my silence.” It was more than I should have said. A pretense that I still had will, and strength.

She laughed. “I’ll enjoy all of it. And then, the things we’ll burn together.”

At least she allowed me my silence there.

“Rest, then, little Legate,” she said, and pressed me back against the bed. I had not the strength to resist. “I’ll send you orders in the morning.”

So I fell into sleep then, and will not speak of my dreams. 


	3. Chapter 3

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> In the aftermath, pain brings clarity.

I’d heard the voice before, a murmur when Ardun Kothe had first leashed me. Something more coherent than the buzz of emotions my mother’s heritage had left me. Something new, and the whispers had lingered along the edges of my thoughts ever since. I’d thought the headaches of stress. But when I awakened again in that room I could feel a new ache behind my eyes, a tension in my spine as my vision blurred. Hunter was gone, and the datapad on the bed was little more than a blotch as my eyes slowly began to adjust.

But now I could place a name behind the voice. Watcher X had always known I’d have to kill him. So few of us escaped this life. I couldn’t, wouldn’t sacrifice myself for his desire of freedom. He’d only asked of it to twist the knife of what I was.

Even then I still knew it was just another way to live with all I’d done. With the endless messages I’d overheard when the Eradicators struck. The day I’d drowned beneath Jadus’ anger so much as all of those screams.

What I couldn’t understand was why all of it had been placed upon the memory of that single Watcher. The scars along my leg that Jadus had left me had not yet faded, and my dreams were haunted by Zhorrid and other Sith before her.

“This brainwashing is an Imperial technique,” the voice said. 

Even knowing that it was only in my thoughts I still jerked up my head and glanced around. “I know,” I said, and my voice was sharp. I balled my hands together and held them against my mouth. No one would have heard me; all that was present there was an echo of my voice from the walls.

_Brain damage,_ I thought. I could have blamed implants or injuries before, but then, with my mind wrapped in chains of words I knew there was something more.

I unclasped my hands and laid them flat against my thighs. Breathed in, out, in yet again. I had no wish to lose myself then, let alone in such a place as that.

“It has to be high-level, too,” I said. Talking to myself seemed slightly better than screaming. “Zhorrid alone could not authorize this.”

Had that been pity I’d seen in the new Intelligence Minister’s eyes?

“There will be records on Dromund Kaas,” the voice said. A ghost, no, a hologram, a delusion, flickered in the corner of my vision. “You can’t tell any others enough for them to aid you.”

I swallowed the gasp in my throat, the bile that followed it. The voice spoke true, whether it was my mind failing or some oddity in the implants the Watcher had once given me. Whatever had wrapped me in this void held power over intelligence, knew what a threat I could have been. Only subtlety could save me, if this was what their attention had wrought.

And the records at least I could manage. Dromund Kaas did not know how I’d been compromised. My access remained, would remain so long as I kept myself quiet.

Then pain returned, a pattern of heat and pressure behind my eyes. It all turned to shadows, the bed palest among them as I fell forward. 

Darkness.

**Author's Note:**

> Yes, Hunter is the character the holographic appearance tag refers to, in a canonical case of it that comes up through the Imperial Agent storyline. For this story that detail comes up in such a way that Hunter chooses to reveal/use a different identity in Chapter 2 before the actual smut starts, thus why it's specifically categorized as F/F.


End file.
